The stories behind the buildings, statues and other points of interest that make Manhattan fascinating.

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Emory Roth's 1926 No. 5 East 57th Street

In 1880 the Bernheimer mansion at No. 5 East 57th
Street was completed at a cost of $40,000—a little over $950,000 in 2016
dollars.When Luther Kountz purchased
what The New York Times described as the “overlarge” and “handsome” residence in December
1889, he paid $110,000; nearly three times its original cost.

Luther and Annie Parsons Ward Kountze enjoyed the lifestyles
of Manhattan’s elite.Luther was the
head of Kountze Brothers, a Wall Street banking firm; and Annie was descended
from the Barclays, DeLanceys and the Livingstons.The couple had four children; one of which,
Helen, was married to Robert L. Livingston.When she died unexpectedly in 1904, her funeral was held in the Kountze
mansion.

Kountze, now widowed, died in the 57th Street
house on April 17, 1918 at the age of 76.By now the once-exclusive residential neighborhood had greatly
changed.While a few opulent mansions
held on, most of the millionaires had relocated further up Fifth Avenue along
Central Park; their former homes replaced by commercial buildings.

On a single day in 1925 William Randolph Hearst and Arthur
Brisbane announced their plans to erect “a group of commercial” buildings on
East 57th Street, and one on West 54th.Among the 14 structures being demolished was
No. 5 East 57th Street.

The New York Times reported on June 13 that the project
included “a twenty-story office and store building at 5 East Fifty-seventh
Street.”It added that the “clearing of
the sites…will see the passing of the old home of Mrs. Luther Kountze, for many
years a social leader in New York.”

The old mansions that survived around the newly-completed building would soon be gone. photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Prolific architect Emory Roth went to work designing all but
one of the Hearst-Brisbane buildings.For No. 5l East 57th Street he concocted a Gothic-Meets-Art
Deco design which emphasized the verticality of the 22-story skyscraper.Alternating bricks in the upper piers ran uninterrupted,
zipper-like, drawing the eye upward eight stories.The spandrels between were filled with crisp
Art Deco panels which stood in stark contrast with the fussy decoration of the
lowest and uppermost floors.

Roth took the recent 1916 “set-back law” to heart.The legislation required the upper floors of
skyscrapers to be stairstepped back; allowing sunlight to reach the streets
below.The setbacks of No. 5 were
exaggerated, proving outside space for the few fortunate tenants willing to pay
for the amenity.The tenants of those
upper floors enjoyed sunlight from all sides as well, a distinct advantage.

The surrounding neighborhood had, for more than a decade,
been the center of Manhattan’s art and antiques trade.Immediately upon its completion No. 5 East 57th
Street saw the arrival of some of New York’s most respected galleries and
dealers.Among the first was the Babcock
Galleries, founded in 1853, which specialized in the works of American
artists.The gallery moved from No. 19
East 49th Street to No. 5 East 57th Street in the summer
of 1927.The caliber of the artwork
displayed and sold by Babcock Galleries was evidenced in December that year,
when Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of Thomas Jefferson was put on display.

Geometric designs give way to more traditional decoration at the upper floors.

Another firm specializing in American artists was the Dudensing
Galleries.It promoted the careers of
budding artists by holding an annual competition of American artists. The winners of the 1928 contest were announced
on New Year’s Day 1929.They included
young Robert Fawcett who, despite his training as a fine artist, would go on to
achieve fame as an illustrator for periodicals like The Saturday Evening Post,
Collier’s, Holiday and Cosmopolitan.

On an upper floor was the workshop of violin maker John
Friedrich who came from Germany in 1883.Friedrich’s violins had been exhibited at several world’s fairs and won
him many prizes.In 1935 he helped in
the search for a stolen 18th century cello by Petrus Guarnerius,
valued at around $10,000.

Friedrich had worked on the instrument “a dozen times” and
he was able to identify “the work he had done on it to bring it back to the
standards set by the family, whose head was a fellow-artisan with Antonio
Stradivari,” reported The New York Times.

While the galleries in the building sold valuable paintings
and John Friedrich worked on priceless violins and cellos, other New Yorkers
were suffering the Great Depression.In
1933 Mrs. William Randolph Hearst took an office in the building to direct New
York City activities for Eleanor Roosevelt’s “canteens for unemployed women.”On May 22, 1933 the Seventh Regiment Armory
at Park Avenue and 66th Street was taken over for a ball to benefit
the cause.Mrs. Roosevelt personally
appeared at the function that hoped to raise $50,000 to maintain the canteens.

The canteens, or “rest rooms,” were located at No. 22 East
38th Street and No. 247 Lexington Avenue.Open every day until 5:00, The Times
described them as “gathering places for unemployed girls looking for work.Light luncheons are served free and a
congenial atmosphere of friendliness is maintained by several volunteers.”

Not everything the Roosevelts did during the Depression
years was universally admired.On March
26, 1936 a new gallery called the Defenders of Democracy opened with an
exhibition of ten murals described by The Times as a “pictorial jeremiad
against New Deal personalities and policies.”President Franklin Roosevelt was “derided” in the satirical murals.

The exhibition was still going on three weeks later when, on
April 14, the United States Navy ordered that the four guards at the gallery
would have to change their uniforms.The
Navy said the military-type outfits were “too much like Marines.”

Later that year, on November 16, a less controversial
gallery moved in.The Newhouse
Galleries, operated by Clyde Mortimer Newhouse, had been founded by his
grandfather in 1878 in the Midwest.The
firm moved to New York City in 1905, offering American paintings by
still-living artists like Winslow Homer, William Chase and Hudson River
School painters like Jasper Francis Cropsey.It now leased three floors in the 57th Street building and
hired John Russell Pope to renovate the space.

The New York Times described the new galleries as “sumptuous”
and noted “The main exhibition room is decorated in modified Moorish or Spanish
style, with white walls, rough in texture, arches and a deeply paneled
ceiling.On an open mezzanine at the rear
may be glimpsed the library, and several smaller exhibition rooms on both
floors add to the facilities.”

Just a week after opening in its new location, The Newhouse
Galleries sold two masterpieces which were then donated anonymously to the Fine Art
Gallery of San Diego.The paintings were
a portrait of Philip II as a child by Alonso Sanchez Coello, and a panel
portraying St. John the Evangelist by The St. Nicholas’s Master.

The pieces were the first of several similar masterworks
sold by Newhouse Galleries here.In
February 1937 it sold El Greco’s “St. Francis;” in May that year the Art
Institute of Chicago purchased John Singleton Copley’s 1777 portrait of Squire
Hyde; and a month later the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington DC bought
Goya’s “Portrait of St. Peter.”

Another high-end gallery in the building was the Douglas
Curry Galleries.It staged an exhibition
of rare pieces of early American pewter, mostly from private collections, in
February 1938.That year the Tonying
Gallery, which specialized in Asian art, opened here as well.

Not all of the tenants, of course, were high-end art
dealers.In 1938 Donald May ran his posh
jewelry store in the building.He
discovered that year that while his customers came from the most prominent
families; the Depression dealt a hard blow to even some of these.

Ten Broeck M. Terhune was described by a newspaper as “socially
prominent.”On January 14, 1938 the
50-year old walked into Donald May’s shop and left with a diamond ring, a
diamond clip and a diamond and platinum bracelet, valued together at $6,000
(more in the neighborhood of $100,000 today).Terhune signed a “memoranda” saying he intended to sell the pieces “to
friends” and would return with the money.He did not.

Nearly two months later Donald May had Terhune
arrested.The Times reported “Detectives..said
these gems were accounted for in pawn tickets in the prisoner’s possession.”The disgraced former millionaire was charged
not only with the theft of May’s jewelry, but with between $40,000 and $50,000
in other such larcenies.

The Newhouse Galleries left in 1938, moving down
the street to No. 15 East 57th Street; but the building continued to
house upscale galleries.On October 16,
1940 the Jacques Seligmann Galleries moved from next door at No. 3 to No. 5
East 57th Street.Like the
Newhouse Galleries, it dealt in masterworks.In 1943 it sold a Renoir and a Goya to the Cleveland Museum of Art; and
in 1945 that museum purchased Picasso’s 1903 “La Vie.”

While the building continued to attract galleries (Orrefors
Galleries opened in February 1940, for instance, and Israel Sachs, one of the
nation’s foremost authorizes on antique furniture, sold 18th century
American furniture and antiques here), it also housed the offices of several noted
architects.In November 1940 William H.
Deacy took space. He was followed by Herrie T. Lindeberg, designer of
expansive country houses, who leased the entire 12th floor in April
1941.The architectural firm of
Skidmore, Owings & Merill would also take space in the building.

At mid-century the ground floor space was occupied by the
well-known Drury Lane Restaurant.In
1956 the newly-formed Biograph Television Company took space on an upper floor.The purpose of the organization was to rescue
the endangered silent motion pictures produced by the Biograph Studios.The firm bought up more than 10,000 rolls of
film, most produced by D. W. Griffith, with stars like Lillian Gish, the
Pickfords and Mae Marsh.

In 1986 Chanel’s first New York store opened in the
building; introducing its famed Chanel No. 5 eau de parfum that year.

Although the lower two floors of Emory Roth’s 1926 hybrid
were obliterated for a high-paying retail tenant; the upper floors survive
intact—a relic of a time when wealthy Jazz Age developers like William Randolph
Hearst and Arthur Brisbane were changing the face of Manhattan.